This invention relates generally to fishing equipment and, more particularly, to a fishing rod holder having an improved actuating mechanism for automatically setting a fish hook.
Many fishing rod holders have been proposed and produced over the years. Most of these devices employ some type of spring mechanism so that, when a fish bites, the holder will react under spring tension to raise the fishing rod and set the hook.
Typical examples of the prior art devices are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,284,943; 3,407,527; 3,722,127; and 3,881,269. In some instances, the prior art devices continue to exert a pulling force on the fishing line after the hook has been set. This increases the possibility of the line breaking. In all of the known prior art devices, as exemplified by the patents identified above, the latch which maintains the rod holder in position before a fish bites releases in direct response to the downward pulling action of the fish. This may cause the release action to be less than smooth and in some cases a fish may actually be able to steal the bait off of the hook without triggering the mechanism which sets the hook.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide a fishing rod holder which automatically sets the fishing hook in response to a fish biting wherein the tension on the rod is released after the hook is set.
A very important aim of my invention is to provide a fishing rod holder having a mechanism to automatically set the hook in response to a fish biting wherein a positive camming action is provided to release the latching mechanism thereby not depending upon casual disengagement of the latch to activate the tensioning mechanism.
As a corollary to the above aim, an objective of the invention is to provide a release mechanism of the type described which pushes upwardly to positively disengage the latching mechanism and is not therefore solely dependent for release upon downward pulling of the rod being held.